A lot of ink has been spilled over how the rise of Trump killed what had been something of a moment for criminal justice reform and rolling back mass incarceration on the right, that had seemed to have real momentum in 2014-2015. Today's rallies and the way they blithely ignore the realities of how gun laws are enforced-- with a racial disparity twice as bad as drug laws, as one of the primary drivers of mandatory minimums and sentence enhancements, and most often as an add-on charge for the war on drugs-- proves those principles never really ran any deeper on the left.
At least the authoritarian strains on the right openly embrace their calls for more and harsher incarceration as what they are. They don't rally for more and longer prison sentences for more people while refusing to acknowledge that's what they're calling for. When they demand, e.g., more deportations and longer sentences and "tough on crime" measures, they don't obfuscate or downplay that the intended result is the government locking up more people. And yet I'm willing to bet the word "prison" won't be mentioned once today from the stage set up on Pennsylvania Ave. What actually happens to people affected once the laws they're demanding get passed and start getting enforced, isn't something they want to acknowledge or talk about. It shatters the illusion of how they like to think of themselves: as peaceful advocates of non-violence, and as enlightened liberal reformers. When all they're really doing is pouring gas on the fire of mass incarceration and encouraging more of the worst aspects of our broken criminal justice system.